Blum, Klara (1904–1971)

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Blum, Klara (1904–1971)

German-Jewish poet and short-story writer. Name variations: Zhu Bailan. Born Nov 27, 1904, in Czernowitz/Bukowina, Romania (now part of the Ukraine); died May 4, 1971, in Canton, China; m. Zhu Xiangcheng (director and journalist, died 1943).

Moved from Romania to Vienna with mother (1913); worked as a journalist and joined the SPO; after winning Communist prize for antifascist poetry, lived in Moscow (1934–47) where she published several books of poetry in German and had a romantic relationship with Zhu Xiangcheng; when he mysteriously disappeared, having been carted off to one of Stalin's Siberian camps, set out for China to find him (1947); became a professor of German language and literature at University of Nanking (1952), then University of Canton (1957); took the name Zhu Bailan; novellas and later poems were collected in Das Lied von Hongkong (The Song of Hong Kong, 1960); also wrote Der Hirte und die Weberin (1951).